What Beer Are You Drinking? #101

Good morning everybody! Just got off work and now I'm ready to drink a few before bed. I'll start my Tuesday off with a delicious Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. Hope everybody has a great day, cheers!

Nothing extraordinary, but most definitely tasty. I think I read somewhere on the forum that they were going to discontinue the black lager so I figured I'd better pick one up again before it's gone, if the rumours are true.

Nothing extraordinary, but most definitely tasty. I think I read somewhere on the forum that they were going to discontinue the black lager so I figured I'd better pick one up again before it's gone, if the rumours are true.

Click to expand...

That's the old label. I highly doubt if that is fresh, so it's pretty cool that this beer held up well enough. Where did you hear about this beer being discontinued?

That's the old label. I highly doubt if that is fresh, so it's pretty cool that this beer held up well enough. Where did you hear about this beer being discontinued?

Click to expand...

I think they've kept on using the old labels for beers exported to Sweden and sold via the monopoly here. This one has a best before date of June 13. Might be because they haven't run through their stock of old labels for the Swedish market since the volumes are so small (it's a combined UK/Swedish label with the importer for both countries listed on it). I noticed their Oktoberfest and Winter lager had the new labels though which is rather strange.

St. Eriks Pale Ale. A Swedish micro brewed pale ale, 4.5% abv hopped with citra hops. St. Eriks is like a Swedish version of Samuel Adams (its regular line-up at least), offering solid and tasty but not extraordinary beers at decent prices. It doesn't have the same hop punch as an American pale ale would have (Swedish craft breweries are either too cost-conscious or simply unable to reach the heights of their American counterparts in this department for the most part imo), and the body is light and pale due to the use of pale ale malt only (which I like since it makes for a rather dry beer), but it's still hop forward enough to provide a nice citrusy hop taste.

St. Eriks Pale Ale. A Swedish micro brewed pale ale, 4.5% abv hopped with citra hops. St. Eriks is like a Swedish version of Samuel Adams (its regular line-up at least), offering solid and tasty but not extraordinary beers at decent prices. It doesn't have the same hop punch as an American pale ale would have (Swedish craft breweries are either too cost-conscious or simply unable to reach the heights of their American counterparts in this department for the most part imo), and the body is light and pale due to the use of pale ale malt only (which I like since it makes for a rather dry beer), but it's still hop forward enough to provide a nice citrusy hop taste.

Their IPA which contains dark caramel malt apart from pale, and Northern Brewer, Centennial and Amarillo instead of Citra. It has a slightly fuller body due to a higher abv (5.3%) but the hop profile is still citrusy, I can't really distinguish much of a difference between the two in that compartment, other than the fact that the bitterness seems more muted in this one due to the caramel malts. A nice beer though.

Has a similar hop profile to the previous beer, but it also has a rather different tasting note which I found to be hard to identify initially. It tastes familiar, and I'm now pretty sure it's the taste of a bubblegum, it's sort of like the taste of evergreen but without the cooling sensation. Really nice and refreshing though.

My first Hopslam! Well second actually...I had one botlle in the parking lot to make sure it was worth the price, and the bought more 71 cases just rolled into my shop HAHAHA friggen wonderful warm weather and great DIPA!

No pictures, but I found my way to D's 6-Pack for some leftover draft Founders treats. It was before 1pm and the bitch bartender poured me a full pint of 2010 Nemesis! I mean, it was delicious, but c'mon! Are you trying to ruin the rest of my beer-drinking day? I pointed her toward the proper tulip/snifter 8oz pours before I ordered a Bolt Cutter. Good thing, too, because that beer is a serious disappointment. Where was the malty aroma? Just some quelled grapefruit hops and barrel wood. Taste followed the nose, pretty much. Well, glad I took a few brews home. Pictures of those up soon.

In the meantime, time to pop my '09 Nemesis in the fridge before stepping out to gather secret ingredients for my girlfriend's impromptu Chopped Challenge!

"Chef Hopmonster, do you have what it takes to become the next Chopped champion? When you get home from work, please open up your basket of secret ingredients!"

think i'll probably miss gold stock again this year, which sucks since just-released gold stock is a top 3 beer for me. fuzzy baby ducks i lucked out on the first time so other people deserve to drink some.

mosaic IPA i bet is going to be amazing.

---

no drinking for me until thursday's CBC barleywine fest. then probably having an eclipse party on friday, and some random shit at someone's bday party on saturday.